In Defence has little to offer

In defenceITVMondays, 9pm

Jeremy Fleming

Mike Cullen's new ITV drama series - In Defence - has little to offer in its own defence.This is one of those spontaneous, emotional, 'high-suspense' dramas with lots of close-ups of characters' faces, which are supposed toregister the subtle nuances of their complicated psyches.

Instead what you see is a lot of people smiling.The police constable smiles at the solicitor while threatening her; the solicitor smiles back, and carries on smiling for the rest of the programme.

In some places smiling replaces the dialogue:Her: 'So, do you want to stay here then?'Him: 'It's two o'clock in the morning.'Her: 'I've only got one bed.'Him: 'I could sleep on the sofa.'They both smile knowingly at one another.

Nudge nudge, wink wink, smile.The plot, when you caught a glimpse of it through the infuriating smiling, was not a bad idea: guilty man kept in prison by a police cover-up which then turns nasty and ends up with an innocent man going down.Former EastEnders nutter Ross Kemp plays a down-at-heel CPS barrister, Sam Lucas.

He has to borrow money from friends and fend off bailiffs.

When his love interest asks him why he's poor (after all, he's a lawyer), he replies that only lawyers who have had the operation are rich.

And the operation? To remove your conscience, of course.

The line would have rung less hollow if it had not appeared in a drama where the entire cast seemed to have undergone lobotomies.